


Further Up and Further In

by ZaliaChimera



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Affection, Afterlife, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Forgiveness, Guilt, Heaven, Love, Metaphors, Moving On, Peace, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Redemption, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Weird Fluff, Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is always one last journey. There is always the red light on the tower guiding them home. And sometimes the last step is the hardest. Disturbing imagery, spoilers for S3M60</p>
            </blockquote>





	Further Up and Further In

The woods are thick and green-dark with moss and filtered light. The ground beneath her bare feet is damp but firm and the rocks and twigs do not hurt when she treads on them. In the distance, always just a little further, she can hear water, the bright rush of a stream over rocks.

She doesn't remember how she got here. It doesn't seem important.

She keeps walking through springy bracken, the soft comforting decay of dead leaves, the loam that she digs her toes into. There are birds in the trees. She cannot see them, but she can hear them. She had never been good at recognising birdsong, but she can appreciate the sweet sound. 

The gentle ground gives way to rock, then smooth, water-worn pebbles. The stream is clear and icy cold when she steps into the water. It makes her gasp, the sandy bed being pulled out from beneath her toes. The water refreshes instead of numbing, and she stoops to catch some in her cupped hands, bringing it to her lips and drinking deeply. The cold takes her breath away, but she keeps drinking, feels the water fill her, soothe away aches that she hadn't noticed until they were gone.

She feels someone watching her. The water slips between her fingers. She turns around, fearless. A shadow lingers, indistinct, amongst the trees. It is out of place, a blot in the tranquillity. She doesn't fear it though. Fear is a hazy, distant emotion. She steps through the water to the other side of the stream where thick brambles have grown up to the waterline, their thorns long and sharp. They do not seem to scratch her, though they crack beneath her feet.

The shadow shies back into the trees. Human shaped, or mostly, but their face is strange. Familiarity prickles at the back of her mind.

Slowly she approaches the shadow like she might a scared beast. It could run, she assumes it could run, but it does not. As she gets closer she can make out details; black clothing that hangs strangely in places, ragged when she squints, then whole again. The face is not a face, but while, unsmiling plastic on one side, while the lower half is covered with a bandanna. What little she can see is shaded by a hood. The one visible eye is deep, warm brown. 

“Simon.” The word is breathed and sparks a rush of memories, a deep ache returning to her.

“Hi Jenny,” he says and his voice is hoarse and rusty from disuse, “I've been waiting for you.”

“Oh my god, Simon! But you're-” Dead. He'd been dead for years. She'd heard him scream as he burnt to death on top of the Comansys building and that had been so many years ago now. So many-  
“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Simon says. He shrugs awkwardly. 

Janine thinks that she should be panicking, she should be feeling something more than calm. But perhaps it doesn't matter now. Not when she feels so at peace.

“I waited for you,” Simon repeats, and she realises how much she had forgotten about the texture of his voice.

“Why?” 

Simon ducks his head, looks away, and she can see now the places where the sunlight shines through him, his body frail as smoke. “I can't go on Jenny. I'm lost.”

“What are you talking about? It's that way.” She points upstream, then pauses, frowns. She doesn't know that rationally, but her body knows it, perhaps it is in her soul. 

“I can't tell,” Simon says, shaking his head. “Every time I try I just walk in circles. I have been for- forever.”

“Oh Simon.” What was the point of holding onto anger now? 

“You should go,” he says, and Janine can see just enough of his face to imagine the twist of his lips in a smile. “Be at peace.”

She feels that tug, an inexorable pull, further up and further in. She takes a step before she knows it and then stops. She looks back over her shoulder at him, even more ghostly now than he had been. She can see the trees behind him, the deepening brambles, cawing crows, the sway of vines like nooses.

“Come with me.”

“What?” he asks, his visible eye widening in shock. “I can't. I can't Jenny. I don't belong.”

She turns back around and offers her hand, palm upturned. “Perhaps you just need the right operator. Come with me, Simon.”

He stares at her. It takes a long time for his decision to be made. He steps towards her and takes her hand with his one remaining hand. She thinks that it had been regained once, along with his face. Perhaps that doesn't matter here. She can barely feel it; it's like trying to hold onto mist. 

“I missed you, Jenny.” The brambles drag at his clothes. He hisses with pain while Janine can pass bare-footed. He stumbles on the rocks, disturbs the silt and sand at the bottom of the stream, clouding the water and scaring away the little silver fish. She has never remembered him as clumsy, but here he trips and slips even on ground that feels smooth and even to her.

She doesn't let go of his hand.

They follow the stream upwards, further up and further in, sometimes in single file, more often side by side while Janine picks out the path that seems easiest. She pretends that she can feel his hand, squeezes it when it seems like he will stop. When she looks at him, she can see the sweat trickling down his face, sticking to his hair. Her own skin is dry, the sun pleasantly warm but nothing more.

She follows the tug, even as the route narrows, the banks of the stream rising up, tangled roots confusing their path. 

Simon falls, his knees hitting the rocky bed of the stream, water soaking through his clothes. She can see him start to shiver. Janine squeezes his hand, feels it like sand in her grasp. 

“You go on, Jenny,” he says, looking up at her. The hood is gone, hair falling into his face and she can see the scars now, deep and pitted where they aren't covered. “Why would you even want me there?”

Janine reaches out to touch the scars and he flinches back. Light flickers and she can see the others, the scales and scars across his torso, the missing lumps of flesh and the rotten hole where his stomach had been, the white bone of his jaw. “Come on Simon. We have a long way to go.” 

He struggles back to his feet. The sun shines on his damp hair. She can see nothing through him.

The way is steep, the tree routes tangled, cracking the white rocks. They scramble up small waterfalls, balance on shifting sands and rocks that move underfoot. The water damps his clothing, makes it stick to his thin form. And he is so dreadfully thin. His hand in hers is bone.

She doesn't let go.

“I heard a story once,” he says, breathless. “Orpheus begged the god and goddess of the underworld to return his dead love.” She knows the story and holds his hand more tightly as he speaks. “The gods agreed under one condition; that he couldn't look back until they both reached the world of the living.” He laughs shortly. “Of course he couldn't do it. Bloody idiot. He looked back and saw his Eurydice melt back into rotten flesh and crumbling bone and then just an apparition.”

Janine stops. He stops in front of her. There are maggots crawling across his face, burrowing into the skin. She draws herself up and though she is no goddess, she is, had been, herself. “I am no fickle musician, Simon,” she says sharply. “And you are certainly not a blushing maiden on her wedding day. Besides,” she adds, and flicks the maggots away with her bare hand, “I already know what you really look like.”

She doesn't let go of his hand. It is raw with exposed tendons and nerves.

The tug grows stronger. The stream widens, becoming slow and still, barely a ripple disturbing the surface. The bank of cracked rock still rises high on one side, but at the other the land opens out into meandering beaches which fade into warm green meadow. She thinks that she could stay here for a while, but the tug pulls her on. Further up and further in.

“Hey, Jenny, wait a minute.” Simon makes her pause and scrapes at the rock with his new free hand, skin sloughing off to reveal raw redness. He turns back with a small blue flower held delicately between his fingers. He holds it out, some tiny hardy alpine. The scars on his face are silver-white and thick and pull at the skin when he smiles. 

“What is it?” she asks.

“Not a clue. I was always too busy running to stop and smell the flowers.” Janine laughs and after a moment he does too, his face lighting up with it. She lets him tuck the flower into her hair just behind her ear. She looks ridiculous, would never have allowed it before, but here it doesn't seem to matter.

“Yes well, come along Simon. I think we're nearly there.”

“Right,” he says, his smile fading and the scars are bloody and sore when they start walking again.

She doesn't let go of his hand. It's cold marble in hers.

She knows that it is there before they see it. The landscape is familiar, even if it isn't exactly the same. There's the shadow of a castle on a hill, the white stone gleaming in the sun. But that isn't where they're going. Further up and further in.

On a grassy hill spotted with wildflowers there is a farm house. The walls are old cream stone and the windows, even the ones on the ground floor, long since cemented over, are wide and glint in the light. There are tents in the courtyard, and a little tin shack, a tower of gleaming metal and even though it is daylight, the red light at the top flashes out calling them home. There are fences, but they're wooden, with wide gaps perfect for dogs to slip through, and honeysuckle and blackberry bushes have woven through it filling the air with a heady scent. She can imagine the ripe fruit staining her fingers and bursting to sweetness on her tongue.

She can see people.

“Come on Simon, we're nearly home.”

She would run, but Simon drags his feet, his steps slower and slower as they approach the wide open gate. She looks back and sees the snarling brambles wrapped around his legs, the shadows around him that the sun cannot touch. 

“I'm scared, Jenny.” It hurts to hear him like that. 

“I know,” she says. “I know you are. But we're nearly there. Just a little further and then we can both rest.”

He takes a breath and follows her slowly, tearing his legs free of the gorse. His legs are ragged with cuts and scrapes and bleeding sluggishly. 

They reach the gate. People are gathering inside, happy and welcoming. She recognises some of them. Runners lost a long time ago, Runners lost since then to age or illness. Her brother is there with the rest of their team, whole like she hadn't seen them before the end of the world. Sara is there, waving, beckoning her inside. Old friends, dearly missed. 

They step up to the gate, take that last single step across the threshold. 

Simon isn't with her. She turns back, one foot still beyond the gate to see him caught by whatever invisible force bars the way.

His smile is pain and he shakes his head. “I can't Jenny. I'm not meant to be here.”

“Of course you are,” she says. Her grip tightens on his hand. She can't let go now. It feels like flesh and blood in hers. “You wouldn't be here if you weren't meant to be.”

“I can't go through, Jenny. It's your place. I understand,” he says earnestly. “You don't forgive me. I don't expect you to. I don't deserve it. That's why I'm out here.”

She does not let go of his hand.

“I forgave you years ago, Simon!”

The confession comes harsh with pain, the first that she's felt since arriving in this place. It hits him like a blow and he stumbles back.

She doesn't let go.

“I forgave you when you gave your life for ours I forgave you when I woke up alone the next day and ever day afterwards for so many years. I forgive you.”

His eye is wide, the mask like white plaster clings to his skin, digging thick thorns into his flesh. And Janine understands.

“I forgive you Simon. But you don't forgive yourself.”

He hunches up and tries to pull away from her, tries to wrap his arms around himself and she knows that if she lets him, if she lets go, he will be lost, stuck in that dark awful side of the woods forever until the thorns tear him apart. 

“Of course I don't,” he says quietly. “I don't even know how.”

And that is the worst of it. His hopelessness. 

She grips his hand and sits down in the grass and pulls Simon with her. A warm breeze brushes over them. “Then I'll wait with you until we figure it out.”

He shakes his head. “Go inside Jenny. They're waiting for you.”

“Come with me,” she says. “They've waited a long time. They can wait a little longer.”

“You were always too good for me, Jenny,” he says. He reaches up to rub at the side of his face where the skin is raw and itchy.

“I think I get to decide that, Simon,” she replies. She catches his other hand, nudges it away to stroke the side of his face. Where she touches, the thorns of the mask recede until it's just that, a white plastic mask. She can't pull it off though. Something still lodges it in place. 

He turns his head to nuzzle against her fingers as he had done a lifetime ago. 

“They might not want me there,” he says, gesturing towards the open gates and the crowds gathering, the people, friends, waving. 

“I want you there. I don't think any of them will mind. Can't you feel it Simon? None of that matters here. You suffered-”

“Not enough,” Simon says. “Never enough.”

“Simon, you suffered. It was enough. You waited in that forest for decades. You screamed as you died. Come with me, Eurydice.”

He laughs at that, a watery sound and then finally pushes himself to his feet. 

She doesn't let go of his hand. 

They reach the gate once more. Simon's grip on her hand is tight. “I don't know what I'm supposed to do.”

“Yes you do,” Janine replies. She touches the side of his face, the flawless skin around his eye, the rest still concealed by the mask. 

He nods. She can see his throat bobbing as he swallows. With his free hand he reaches up to touch his face. The bandanna is the first to go, dragged down around his neck. His fingers hover over the mask, and for a second it slips, twists, engulfs his face, but then he touches it and it recedes. He pulls it off. It's just plastic.

“Oh.” He stares down at the thing in his hand, the scrap of white. “Oh!” In his fingers it crumbles to sand and is caught by the wind. 

Janine tilts his chin up, looks at him, at the man he had been when she'd first loved him, but younger perhaps; there is less care in his face than she remembers, fewer shadows than she has ever seen.

“Janine. Jenny I-”

“I love you too, Si.”

“Can we-?”

“Of course we can,” Janine says. They turn to the gate. There are friends waiting for them inside. 

Jody waves to them both. “You're late, Three!”

“We are all late,” Archie says, and laughs at her own joke. “It is a good joke. Late.”

“Give them space to get inside,” Sara says. “They can't do anything while you're blocking the gate.”

“Come on Simon. Let's go home.” 

“Yeah. Let's go home.”

They step through the gate. Simon doesn't let go of her hand.


End file.
